Writing popular fiction

year.
    10.
What about other subsidiary rights—paperback sale of a hardcover edition, films, serialization
? Most novels printed in hardcovers are picked up for paperback reprint, though a substantial minority do go without this reward. Paperback houses pay the original publisher as little as $2,000 and as much as $1,000,000 or even more for best-sellers or potential best-sellers; this paperback money, then, is split (usually fifty-fifty) between the author and the hardcover publisher. This can mean as little as an additional $1,000 for the author, or as much as $50,000 for the author in the case of A
Report from Group 17
by Robert C. O'Brien, and better than $200,000 for someone like Mario Puzo and a book like
The Godfather
.
    For every novel purchased for motion picture production, hundreds go unnoticed by Hollywood. A movie sale is either a stroke of luck which no sane author would waste time thinking about, or the work of a shrewd agent and, again, beyond the author's province. Motion picture sales can run from as little as $10,000—all of it, aside from the agent's fee, being the author's money—to as much as the property can command. While producers are reluctant to commit that kind of cash, they are often willing to
option
a novel—usually at ten, fifteen or twenty percent of the purchase price. Most authors with ten books behind them have benefited from one or more options never picked up and carried to a final purchase. Many authors consider options "found money" and keep an agent chiefly for the bits and pieces of income, like this, which he brings them.
    The era of the large circulation, general audience magazine is gone and, with it, most of the markets for serialization of a novel.
Playboy
and several women's magazines still pay big money for serial rights but reject two hundred titles for every one they run. The only genre magazines that regularly carry serials are in the science fiction field and pay two or three cents a word for the privilege of publishing them. That's not a fortune, but still the competition is rugged.
    Book club rights, if sold, more often bring $1,000 to $3,000 for the author rather than the five- and six-figure sales reported by Book-of-the-Month Club and the Literary Guild. Like the possibility of the movie sale, the sale of book club rights to a major company at a fat advance is something to be kept in the back of the mind, shelved next to "miracles" where it cannot obsess the writer and cause him to waste time in useless daydreaming.
    11. If
I manage to sell hardcover rights instead of going straight to the paperback original market, 'what kind of royalties can I expect the hardcover to earn
? Hardback sales are not what they once were, and most hardback category novels are supported by libraries. Few books get a second printing, and the average novel earns between $2,000 and $6,000 in hardback royalties, from which you must deduct the amount of your original advance.
    The standard hardback advance schedule makes provision for a 10$ royalty on the first 5,000 copies, 12/2% on the second 5,000 copies, and 15% on everything thereafter.
    12.
Would I help the sales of my hardcover novel if I spent time promoting it
? Undoubtedly, you would, if you have any knack for being interviewed by newspaper, radio, and television reporters. However, unless your book has sure best-seller potential, you will not be reimbursed by your publisher for your travel expenses on behalf of the novel. If the novel has best-seller potential, special response from readers and critics prior to publication, the publisher may provide an advertising budget and may help you promote the work. For the large majority of new novels, however, not a cent is dealt out for promotion purposes.
    The smart writer will consent to newspaper or other interviews whenever he is asked, will promote his book whenever he can, so long as most of his time is still spent at the keyboard creating
new
work. Promotion of his latest piece should not become—unless he's an Arthur Hailey who writes only a book every three years or so—a full-time or even a substantial part-time job, for it seriously saps the strength.
    13. So
far, it sounds as if a genre writer must be prolific to be successful and that he must spend quite a bit of time at the typewriter. Exactly what kind of schedule should the freelance genre writer maintain
? When I speak before a group of potential novelists and short story writers, or when a new writer